


Be With Me

by blissphemy



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Reylo - Freeform, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21956080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blissphemy/pseuds/blissphemy
Summary: Ben falls into the pit, but he doesn't climb out alone.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 103





	Be With Me

When Palpatine pushes Ben from the floor of the throne chamber and back, back, back into the pit, he is afraid.

Ben is a boy again and wakes to find his Uncle standing over his pallet with murder in his heart.

The first time Ben was ever afraid to die.

He falls, air rushing around him and heart hammering its way out of his ears. The burning white light pushes up from the planet’s corrupted core and washes all thought and reason from his brain.

With effort - so much effort - Ben draws on the Force and it flows to him like honey. He wills his armas stronger and his reflexes faster and - there. His fingers catch the tiny outcropping of stone. His fall swings him into the rock face, hard enough to crack a normal person's ribs, but Ben Solo has never been a normal person.

But it still hurts. He can feel his fingers bleeding from the effort of holding on and he gasps air back into his winded lungs, blinking tears away and squinting against the cold light.

He feels wrung out, dazed and weak since Palpatine snatched the life from him. With a mighty effort he hauls the other arm up, fingernails screaming with the strain of holding onto the outcropping. His arms start to shake now and he lets out a sob from the effort.

Above, on the edge of his hazy perception, he can feel the Force gathering like a tidal wave. And he can feel Rey rising with it. That incredible, terrible Scavanger girl.

 _Darkness rises, and light to meet it_. Snoke’s words drift through his mind like a shiver of cold.

He sobs again, this time not from the pain in his hands, or his shaking arms, or the fear of the drop below. He knew from the moment he saw her that Rey would bring balance to the Force. And Ben Solo was always the boy who did everything wrong: too passionate and quick to anger, too afraid of losing his parents when they left for weeks at a time on mission after mission. Too willful and stubborn and emotional, and too much of a failure to be a Jedi.

Ben Solo came to this planet to die, an afterthought in the battle between light and dark.

Rey will save the Resistance, and he will fall down, down, down into the Sith planet’s core and be consumed. At least, he supposes, the Resistance will be saved and his mother and father's legacy will live on.

And he is definitely going to fall, because his arms are quaking and he can feel his fingers starting to slip -

\- and a hand closing over his wrist, somehow insubstantial but warm and strong.

Ben looks up with a gasp, and meets the eyes of a young man.

Curling, wild hair frames a face with fierce eyes. A determined, almost pouting, mouth curls into a smile. His robes are the old-fashioned style of a Jedi Knight, but the colours deep and dark browns and blacks rather than the usual pale shades.

"Hello Ben," says Anakin Skywalker, and his voice strikes Ben's heart like lightning.

Ben can only stare, eyes wide and mouth agape, until finally his mind gears back into motion and he gasps, "Grandfather."

Somehow, Anakin's ghostly hand over his floods strength into his arms; enough to pull himself inch by painful inch to stand, wavering, on the ledge barely wide enough for his boots.

Anakin is there, next to him, leaning against the wall with ease and fixing Ben with a burning gaze.

"They're all up there, you know," Anakin says conversationally, casting a flicker of his eyes and nudge of his head up to the lip of the pit, where they can just make out flashes of light from the fight above. "All of the Jedi are with her - to fight all of the Sith."

"And why," Ben manages to rasp out, "are you down here?" He swallows a hard, painful lump and adds; "With me?"

That smile curls Anakin's lips again and his voice takes on a conspiratorial note.

"I never did quite fit in with the Jedi, you know."

And with a rush of wind, the ghost of his grandfather fades away, and Ben is alone again on the ledge.

He looks up to where the light dances over the edge of the platform in searing bursts and to where he can feel Rey pushing, pushing with the power of hundreds of Jedi Masters, against the power of hundreds of Sith.

He looks at the rough stone, inches from his nose, and wonders how he will ever make his way to the top. He stands, shaking, and begging his Grandfather to return with his strength again.

It is not the strength of Anakin Skywalker that warms his quivering muscles, though. He gasps a sharp breath in and the cold air of the pit is filled with the scent of her - of fuel from the ships she spent so much time around, of the oil she brushed into her hair as she braided it. The scent of his childhood. The scent of his mother.

"Ben." 

Her voice is barely a whisper on the wind that tugs at his clothes with incessant fingers. She does not arrive as a ghostly figure, but her presence envelops him. He is five years old again, crying from a skinned knee, and his mother wraps herself around him and makes everything better.

"You have to climb now, Ben," she says softly, and he sacrifices one hand from steadying himself on the wall so that he can wipe away the tears on his cheeks.

"I c-can't," he chokes again, looking back up to the rim so very far away.

Now the warmth grows hot, spreading life and strength back into his battered body.

"You can," murmurs General Leia Organa. "You must."

A bitterness sits in the depths of his belly; an ugly knot of bile that coils and worms inside of him.

"They chose her," he says, barely a whisper. "The Jedi Masters chose her to put an end to the Sith."

He can almost hear her humming a lullaby, almost feel gentle fingers soothe his hair.

"Rey will save the Resistance," his mother acknowledges. "And you will save her." Pride and love swell in her next words, in his heart: "My son."

With his mother's strength, Ben Solo climbs out of the pit.

When he reaches Rey, her body lies lifeless on the floor. She flops in his arms as he lifts her, turns her over, holds her. She is still warm in his arms. The determination that helped him scale the sheer rock face crumples inside of him, and he sobs again.

He sobs for the Scavenger girl who never stopped fighting, and he sobs for the boy who never got anything right. 

His mother was wrong when she said he would save Rey.

The thump of his agonized heart seems to beat through her empty chest, and as the pain blossoms inside of him he remembers another pain, on another dark and lonely planet. And he remembers Rey's hand stretching over the hole through his chest, and her life sustaining his.

He gently lowers her torso into his lap. For the first time in almost a decade, he casts his mind back to his uncle's class. He straightens his spine, and forces a breath in - one... two... three.

He is a Padawan again and he is learning to meditate.

He reaches out to the living Force and it winds loving tendrils around him. He opens his mind and the Force opens to him and suddenly there are words, ones he never knew before, breathing from his lips.

"Be with me."

This is not the tsunami that he felt gathering before. It is a trickle; a gentle wash like the flickering of distant stars. And then the voices come, whispering their assent.

"Ben", some say, and others, "we are here" until they are a cacophony in his mind.

Until they stop, and he feels a hand on each of his shoulders.

Beside him stand Anakin Skywalker, and a man with grey hair and beard, and kind eyes.

"We are with you," says his grandfather.

"The strength of the Jedi flows through you," says his namesake.

He pours their strength into the body in his lap, the living Force guiding him like an old master. He doesn't know how he does it - he didn't even know it was possible. In this moment he feels the Force pouring itself through him; a conduit for its will.

And suddenly it is gone, and the Jedi are gone, and he is shaking but alive with Rey in his arms.

She sucks in a sudden breath, and her eyes are filled with light again as they look up at him. Her whole face lights in a smile as she greets him.

"Ben!"

She is upright in a flash, hands cupping his face as though she is checking that he is really there. Her fingers are rough and her palms calloused. Their warmth on his skin floods joy into his veins.

He opens his mouth to tell her how scared he’d been to find her there, but then she kisses him and fear evaporated from his mind.

For the first time, Ben Solo does not feel like a failure.


End file.
